Lynn McGee
Social Isolating, 1
Last night a cockroach walked toward me
on the counter. He paused, and lifted his willowy
antennae. They undulated in tandem
with each other. He seemed to make a decision
at that point, and high-stepped reluctantly
toward me, as if wading through something
sticky, and tilted his head to read the ripples
of heat and reek that emanated from my mass.
A roach can live a week without his head.
His vented torso sings. The pandemic
settles into our living rooms.
Lynn McGee is the author of Tracks (Broadstone Books, 2019) and Sober Cooking (Spuyten Duyvil Press, 2016), as well as two award-winning poetry chapbooks, Heirloom Bulldog (Bright Hill Press, 2015) and Bonanza (Slapering Hol Press, 1996). Here poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, Ontario Review, Phoebe, Painted Bride Quarterly, Sun Magazine, and The New Guard, among other journals, as well as in the anthology Stonewall’s Legacy (Local Gems Press, 2019), edited by With José Pelauz, McGee wrote the children’s book Starting Over in Sunset Park (Tilbury House Publishers, 2020). She serves on the advisory board of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and co-curates the Lunar Walk Poetry Series with Gerry LaFemina and Madeleine Barnes. Online at lynnmcgee.com.
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